I had a difficult time cutting this down- this excerpt is practically the entire first page. The narrative of Clay, our protagonist is clear from the very start. His honesty, almost clinical detachment and growing alienation from the scenarios he finds himself in throughout the book- of absurdly rich, cocaine snorting, morally and ethically challenged individuals, most of them teenagers, like himself, is bare and brutal. I really enjoyed this book, and Clay’s journey into a modern and disturbing heart of darkness, the seedy underworld of L.A.

Abandon all hope ye who enter here.  

PS: fans of the book! Easton Ellis has written a sequel, due out July 2nd. Great interview here.

Maia! (love the altered Margo headline of your page btw!)

thank you so much everyone for following this little project, I hope in some small way I’m making you want to read more/re-visit old books/enjoy reading! haha.

Thanks guys! 

Unfortunately I’m unable to follow back specifically on FirstPages because it’s not on a different account, it’s run off my personal tumblr. If you wanna follow me on my actual blog I might follow you back though. Hope that doesn’t sound like a lame attempt to get followers. (:

These books were so so fantastically, whimsically dismal, and I loved reading them so much when I was younger (and now!) and waited for each one to be released. Also, I adore Brett Helquist’s brilliant illustrations.

I know the kids are into ‘The Twilight Saga’ right now, which by the way, comprises of four books and spans about a year and a half. Hardly a ‘saga’.
Mr Snicket published 13 of these beauties. That’s right, 13. 41 languages, 60 million copies. And Count Olaf was way, way creepier than sparkly evil vamps. Jus’ sayin’. 

I am totally re reading these over the summer. Sorry school reading list. 
And sorry Twilighters. 

highlights!:

Thomas Aquinas

Premature ejaculators.

Harper Lee

People who have read only one book in their life and it was To Kill A Mockingbird (and it was their assigned reading in the ninth grade).

Sylvia Plath

Girls who keep journals (too easy).     guilty!

Dan Brown

People who used to get lost in supermarkets when they were kids.

Brothers Grimm

Only children with Oedipal complexes. 

Leo Tolstoy

Guys I want to date.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Guys I want to sleep with. (The difference between the two Russian authors lies in the fact that I think the Underground Man is sexier than Pierre Buzukhov).      again…probably guilty.

There’s loads, and they are all amusing and applicable to people we all know.
Though I love me summa those kooky Brothers Grimm and I’m neither an only child or suffering from an Oedipus Complex…did I beat the system? fuck yeah.

Big Brother is watching you…

One of my favourite first lines, and a fantastic book. I’m big on dystopias.

#5

I love this book. Kesey worked in a mental hospital for a brief spell, and the inspiration he drew from it is evident in this brilliant book. His metaphor of madness as a fog, that surrounds and engulfs  and provides Chief with an escape from the florescent lit reality of the asylum is one of my all time favourites. And the ending…! If you’ve seen the film, (I’m a Nicholson fan) you really need to read the book. 

#4

One of my all time favourites. Plath writes with such quirky artistic beauty, and her only novel is truly powerful, and of course poignant. Lois Ames writes in Sylvia Plath: A Biographical Note, ‘On the morning of February 11, 1963, she ended her life. Who can explain why?…that bell jar out of which she had once struggled brilliantly, successfully, apparently completely, but of which she could write with the clarity of the of one who has endured: “to the person in The Bell Jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”

Suggested further reading: Sylvia Plath - Ariel, Sylvia Plath - Journals, Diane Middlebrook - Her husband: Hughes and Plath - a Marriage.

#3

The Virgin Suicides is one of my favourite books, it’s hauntingly beautiful, as is the film, which is a Sophia Coppola. I’d really really really recommend it.

#2

a sad and beautiful true story of a man, locked inside his own mind.

#1, 5th September 2009

(In this first sentence, Wilde gives us a taste of the eloquence of his words, hinting at the decadence and luxury this story will include. There is also, perhaps, a sense of foreboding- the ‘flowering thorn’ suggests danger masquerading behind beauty. A reference to Dorian himself?)